The Land Where Life Is Large
A Story of Oregon Farms for Other Farmers
By WILLIAM R. LIGHTON
Author of: The Story of an Arkansas Farm
We're a restless lot, we Americans. We hold the world's record for restlessness. Ever since our great great-and-then-some-grandsires fought for their first feeble foothold on the Atlantic side we've been drifting and shifting, drifting and shifting, forever on the move, forever on the hunt for something. Think of it: in fifty years we've mastered half a continent, making history as it was never made before.
What have we been hunting for? We haven't been spending all this time and money and blood on a mere hunt for change and excitement and adventure. It isn't the dream of wealth that's enticed us, nor yet the vision of empire. Those things are all well enough in their way; but none of those things is our master-passion, our real heart's desire. You know it, too.
What we've been looking for, more than all else, above all else, has been a place where we might come to rest in peace; a place of refuge from the heart—burning, soulracking, tormenting wandering. Appearances are against us, but in our heart of hearts we're home-makers. That's what we've been aiming at, through these centuries of stormy adventuring. Almost to a man we're cherishing fond sweet hopes of finding, some time, somewhere, a place where the sword of anxious endeavor may be beaten into the tools of the home-builder; a place where we may walk jocund through golden days of dear delight, finding that life has broadened, deepened, become large. Maybe that's too flossy a way of saying it; but you know it's true. That's what you want; that's what I want—and we shan't be happy till we get it.
Not many of us have actually come upon the real thing. For most of us, the real thing has seemed to lie always somewhere beyond the rim of the horizon, forever coaxing us on, forever vanishing, just ahead of us, in the mists of distance. Lots and lots of us have come to the point of thinking that in holding out the hope the gods have been mocking us. Lots and lots of us are about ready to give up the quest with a regretful sigh and try to content ourselves as best we can with some sort of a compromise. Lots and lots of us have made up our minds that the thing we've seen in our visions is after all absolutely too good to be realized.
It isn't, though. Listen. I've just seen with my own eyes one of those rare and perfect places where life may have that supreme quality which satisfies longing—not merely length, breadth and substance, but also that fourth dimension of divine content. No, I'm not trying to fool you. It's too solemn a matter for fooling. The Willamette valley of Oregon is a land where life is large.
This wonderful valley lies tucked snugly away between the Cascade mountains on the east and the Coast Range on the west. Its mouth is at Portland, at the junction of the Willamette river with the Columbia; its upper end is in the highlands of Lane county, off to the south. The valley proper holds about 5,000,000 acres of the most fertile soil in the world, a soil equal to any demand that may be made upon it. Today it is carrying a population, outside the city of Portland, of about 200,000 people. Brought to its fullest development, this land will one day support one prosperous, happy human being on every acre—five millions of people whose life will embody the highest and best things in civilization. Yes, I know well enough that prophecy is a dangerous business, under common conditions; but here's a case where the prophet has a cinch. He can't miss it; he can see it with one eye tied behind him.
Nobody can tell this story adequately, no matter who he is nor what his gifts. It seems absurd to try. When the pen has done its utmost and begins to stutter impotently, the best must still remain unwritten. We haven't yet made the words
